Pitch perfection : how does pitch affect risk behaviour

• Main Authors: Chua, Gabriel Yong Ping, Liaw, Shao Yi, Er, Hui Jun
• Other Authors: He Tai-Sen
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2020
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/138591
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Our daily interactions are predominantly influenced by face-to-face and other verbal forms of communication. Individual perceptions of others are often subconsciously influenced by the speech cues such as vocal pitch. We hypothesize that high pitch increases risk aversion and low pitch decreases risk aversion. In this study, we have manipulated the voice of a person to investigate the effects of pitch on one’s risk aversion. The experiment is conducted using the Qualtrics, web-based data collection software and 92 participants are randomly allocated into 3 group namely, High Pitch, Low Pitch and Control (unaltered audio). We observe that our hypothesis is indeed true and suggested trustworthiness and boredom as possible mechanisms explaining such behaviour.